


Be Thyself

by cannibalinc



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Grooming, Handwavy Political Stuff, Kind of dark, Lily is not having a good time, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, dirtybadwrong
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-13
Updated: 2020-12-13
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:35:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28042506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cannibalinc/pseuds/cannibalinc
Summary: At thirty-two years old, Lily Evans is a composed and uncompromised planner, and she knows herself very well. She is a Muggleborn. She is a powerful sorcerer of nearly unmatched calibre, she is married to the love of her life, she is running to be the youngest Minister of Magic in history, and despite her best efforts to prevent it, she is six months pregnant with the Dark Lord Voldemort's soulmate.
Relationships: Harry Potter/Voldemort, James Potter/Lily Evans Potter
Comments: 33
Kudos: 387





	Be Thyself

**Author's Note:**

> Apparently the Rigmarole Dance wasn't enough to get all of my Harrymort soulmate feelings out so here's basically the Rigmarole Dance but super depressing. I love inescapably dirtybadwrong soulmate fantasies where you can only watch the house burn!
> 
> Harry's happy at least.

They are shouting her name, “Evans! Lady Evans!” and crawling over one another with cameras and quills akimbo. 

Lily stands behind her press podium with a straight back, hands folded behind her in perfect parade rest. She watches the mob in silence until their frothing clamour quiets into something respectable. She will not answer any questions until then. 

“Yes, you sir,” she says to one of the reporters in the crowd.

“Thank you, Ma’am, Rivers with the _Evening Edition_ at the _Prophet_. Have you been planning to run for Minister since taking control of the Potter Wizengamot seats?”

This question causes an uproar, and Lily holds her hand up to stay their voices. 

“They are the Evans seats, Rivers, as many know my dear husband James took my name when we married. It has long been my trajectory to one day take the mantle as Minister. I have dedicated my entire career to gaining the necessary expertise to competently and confidently lead our world into the next era.”

Lily directs her gaze evenly along the crowd as she answers, and gestures to the next reporter before Rivers can reply. 

She feels Albus Dumbledore smile from her side, his fuschia robes ablaze in her periphery.

“Popperdell with _Wixen Daily,_ Mam. How do you plan to secure support over your running mate Millicent Bagnold and incumbent Minister Minchum? Chief Warlock Dumbledore is clearly here in your support, but what of your challengers?”

“I am glad you asked. I will be strengthening my relationship with my peers within the Wizengamot and my peers without. In fact, following this press conference, I am convening with my biggest opposition. Any points of contention between us are cosmetic at most, and the path to my victory is a sure one.”

The questions pour unstoppable after this.

“Even though you’re Muggleborn? So young? Even though you’re pregnant?”

“Will the Dark Lord be attending this meeting?” 

“What will you do if you’re elected and must take maternity leave?”

“Do you plan to run a campaign on banning the Dark Arts?”

Lily bears the rush of it all with unwavering composure.

“I do not oppose the Dark Arts. Dark magic is the head and tail of White magic. They are one in the same, and I have great respect for the Lords who dedicate themselves to keeping the balance between them. The Dark Lord and Dumbledore the White have worked tirelessly together for generations, and I have no designs on insinuating myself on their task.”

It is quiet as her audience takes this in.

With a jolt, Harry kicks her squarely in the kidney. She smiles patiently to hide the twitch in her mouth.

“My issue is the culture of blood supremacy which surrounds the Dark Arts. Many conflate the two, confuse the culture and practise for one in the same, but my eyes are clear. And I will challenge blood supremacy wherever I see it. Thank you.”

They are wild at this, voices rising as an enraged tide, and Lily steps away from the podium.

“Thank you for joining me today,” she says over the tidal wave. “Thank you, I look forward to serving you!”

She is greeted by James just to the side of the Ministry steps, and they embrace and wave to the cameras in good fashion. 

“You were wonderful,” James whispers. “Terrifying.”

“Put your hand on my stomach, I’ll bet it’s the front page tomorrow morning,” Lily murmurs with a smirk hidden in a curtain of red hair. James laughs.

“Soften your image up, too, General.”

Lily smiles one last time for the cameras before ascending the Ministry staircase. 

Albus meets her inside, clasping her hands in his, eyes sparkling.

“Well done, my dear. I dare say you’re more frightening than ever.”

Madames Jones and Longbottom join them then, one pleased and the other scowling. Lily braces herself, for even if Longbottom’s displeasure is predictable, it is ever scathing. She is a Bagnold supporter. 

“Supporting the Dark Arts at a press conference! Of all things!”

Alice and Frank are lovely friends, but the matriarch is punishing.

“Let’s not argue just yet, Augusta,” Albus says with a good natured smile. “We have a room reserved for it.”

“For God’s sake,” James mutters and says his swift goodbyes back to the Auror department. Eager to be out of the line of fire, ironically. 

They make their way through the atrium to the Second level, squeezed in the elevator together with as much dignity as one can manage when Madame Longbottom’s voluminous and feathered hat is taking up a good portion of breathing space. Lily is still spitting feathers by the time they reach their conference chamber.

Lucius Malfoy and his boy’s club are already seated inside, looking as usual unaffected and above it all. There’s Crouch, Fudge and Crabbe, the stooges really. They’d all rather support Harold Minchum, a man and an idiot at that, bombastic and easily manipulated or bought. A halfwit who can hardly charm a cat from a bag.

No, they’d sooner have a cold, dead corpse in the seat of Minister for Magic over Lily Evans.

She will change their minds.

“Lady Evans, you’ve certainly made an impression with your five minutes of fame.”

“Oh, it was ten minutes at least, Mr. Malfoy.”

They share a terse bow out of performative respect. Malfoy is the kind of man Lily cannot tolerate. Self-serving, spineless, kowtowing, _kiss-arse_ who has made a career of being old money and little else. Worst of all his crimes is his pretentious cane. In fact, the man is mid-gesture with the horrid thing when he freezes in place and his face melts into that insufferable, groveling smirk that can only mean one thing.

“My Lord!” he simpers, bowing so deeply, he nearly concusses himself on his knees. 

The room is hushed as the Dark Lord Voldemort sweeps into the chamber with his usual drama of black silken robes. His eyes glow red in the dim of the room, and he takes his seat opposite that of Albus.

Lily hadn’t lied when she spoke on her opinions of Dark magic. It is as natural as any other, and Lily herself has spent long hours studying ancient blood magics. She has an order of Merlin for her achievements even. But there is something sinister in the Dark Lord.

As a Lord of Magic, he has colluded with forces none other have dared to touch, a scholarly ambassador of all things occult and black. He is a dedicated acolyte, performing solstice rituals, summoning the dead, representing dark creatures. 

And while he has not made an overt move to seize power, he has a hand deep in the Ministry workings, his own shadow army. Lucius Malfoy is one among many, a man who swears fealty to the Dark Lord first, the Ministry second. There has been no proof that the Dark Lord is a threat to the current powers that be, but there are whisperings of him amassing his power. Consolidating his British throne as Prince of Night. 

After all, it is a title that has existed far longer than the Wizengamot, Minister for Magic besides.

“Lady Evans...” he hisses in his drawl. “The Wix of the hour.”

“Dark Lord Voldemort,” she greets. “You honor us with your presence here today.”

The man, if he is still that, steps fully into the room followed by his right hand.

“Lily.”

“Severus.”

They are not quite friends these days, the warmth of childhood nostalgia not hot enough to bridge the gap between them. Severus has since denounced his supremacist beliefs as a misguided teenager, but for Lily, her fondness is chilled. They are civil, at least.

“Shall we begin with all guests accounted for?” Albus asks, smiling at the Dark Lord. “As always, it is good to see you, Tom.”

“Don’t test my fair mood, Dumbledore,” Voldemort warns. “We mustn’t begin just yet.”

There is pressure in the room now that they both are here. It makes Lily’s ears pop, sensitive to the magics of two Lords of opposite affinity. Their power is that of the magnetic poles, a physical force that feels like atmospheric squeezing, like she might apparate.

Harry can feel it too, going by his sudden activity.

“May I ask for what reason you’d delay us further?” Lily is so bold to say.

“A successful campaign must be started with a blessing. It is ill luck otherwise.” 

“You’d wish success upon me? I am truly blessed.”

She casts a wry grin to their gathering, though the Dark Lord is unmoved by her cheek.

“I recall you had an affinity for scrying in your school days. I even sought to recruit you once for your promise.”

She did perform well in the Dark Lord’s seminars on those rare occasions Hogwarts hosted his teachings. Once, he was a mentor to her. They would spend afternoons after lessons, she marveling at his knowledge, and he humoring her burning curiosity. She imagined following in his footsteps once. 

Before his servants tainted her affection with jealousy and slurs.

Severus hated her for surpassing him in favor, and Lily hated him for turning their peers against her.

She clenches her jaw.

“You flatter me, Lord. But I hadn’t prepared a gift for you in return.”

The Dark Lord smiles, his teeth sharp.

“That won’t be necessary, Child. A Blessing is not to be reciperacted.”

Her son kicks again, harder this time, and Lily cannot stop herself from reflexively touching her side. Voldemort tracks the movement thoughtfully.

“Shall I guide you through a blood-scry for the child?”

It is a generous offer. With their combined talents, Lily would likely see years’ worth of visions of her unborn son’s greatest loves and fears. She’d hear his voice before the first cry, see his face before the first contraction. Know him inside and out, and he currently knows her.

It is almost too generous.

“Lily!” Madame Longbottom gasps, making her displeasure known. Hers is not the only objection, but Lily wishes to be greedy. Politics has her thinking constantly of herself last. Why shouldn’t she meet her son, if a little earlier?

“Very well.”

They stand together in the center of the chamber, and Lily dutifully draws her wand. She uses it to slice her ring finger, the heart’s digit, and bleeds into the Dark Lord’s waiting palm. He closes his eyes, reaches for her bloodied hand with his, and one to the swell of her stomach. His hands are much larger than hers, white and clawed.

James will be furious, she thinks the moment they touch. 

Burning light flashes between them. 

It bleaches the room, scours her skin and chases every withering shadow away. The blaze is purifying with its force, stunning and absolute. 

“ _No_ ,” Lily gasps, the sound of her drowned by the surprised shrieks of their audience. It cannot be! _James_ is her heart, this is impossible! She cannot be— _they_ cannot be! Please, no! But as the light dims and her adrenaline ebbs, she comes all at once to her senses. 

She does not feel that historic rush. 

The euphoria. 

The agony.

The clear look of all consuming desperation that sings on Lord Voldemort’s face as his soul merges with another. She does not feel as he feels. 

Lily forces her hand free from the Dark Lord’s frozen grasp.

He is not looking at her.

Instead, he is looking at her swollen belly, where his glowing hand rests upon it. The light catches on his black-stoned ring, and when he at last pulls away, there is a raw, mangled mark seared into his palm. A Soul Mark.

Harry kicks directly on the spot.

“Oh my,” Albus breaks the silence.

“It appears _you_ have delivered to _Me_ the most precious of gifts, after all,” Voldemort whispers. His pupils are wide with wonder, with promise. 

Her eyes fill with tears against her will.

“He has not even been brought into the world yet, and you have taken him from me,” she chokes.

Their eyes meet, and where Lily pleads with him to be kind in this moment, he is only cruel.

“He never was yours.”

—

Soulmates are… hallowed. Protected. They are rare and worshipped. In some cultures they are as gods among men, and so few that each is recorded diligently. Lovingly. Their coming together is a divine, harmonic convergence.

Helga Hufflepuff and her great love Celine the Brave.

Albus Dumbledore and Gellert Grindelwald. 

Hecate, Circe, Morgana, all the great Wixen had Soulmates. 

They are sacred. They cannot be separated, not by law or time, neither by nature nor man. They are halves which will unerringly find one another, will merge between themselves and know communion as no other. They share one magic, one mind. 

Harry Evans will never be Lily’s.

—

The fighting starts after the shock abates, before propriety can flood its way back in. 

“The Dark Lord, bound to a Halfblood?”

“Son of a Mudblood!”

“A Light family!”

“This could ruin your campaign, Lily!”

“You must concede at once!”

“You dare!”

All her other inadequacies, real and imagined.

She cares for it not. What a small matter, her blood status, her campaign, her family’s affiliation. What small matters to the fate of her son! 

You cannot have him! Lily longs to shout, and that is worst of all, for it is not true.

Soulmates are sacred.

She could not separate them if she spent her lifetime trying. Could not separate the sun from its light, the mountain from the cliff, the ocean from the tide. In life and death and thereafter.

Through all of this, Lord Voldemort is silent. He holds his affected hand, his crimson eyes never wavering from Lily. Lily's stomach. The spot still shimmers with a white light where they’d touched. She’d expect her skin to burn, but all is numb.

“Myself and my vassals will do our utmost to ensure your victory, Lady Evans,” he says and the room falls silent at once. “Our alliance is certain now, you understand.”

Her heart sinks in her chest. 

Could she run? Steal away with her own child, and never return? 

No. The law forbids it. And Harry would only suffer the soul sickness that befalls those misfortunate enough to be separated from themselves.

There was a time Albus was deathly ill. Lily looks to the man now, for guidance or clarity or denial, she does not know. He offers only his congratulations, of all the vulgar things.

“I understand,” she says.

She doesn’t.

—

She wins the election and gives birth to her son the same night, Harry James Evans. It is a relatively painless labour, as most magical births are. Clean and warm.

They name Sirius Black Godfather, and Lily watches James pass her darling child to Sirius, watches them cry and laugh in fits. She holds him to her heart already missing him inside her. 

He is starlight and everything beautiful.

She’d do anything for him.

“By all accounts, your baby is in perfect condition, Minister,” their Mediwitch tells them. “Ten fingers, ten toes, a good set of lungs. Ah, and his Soulmark. It’ll look a bit irritated but should calm down in a few hours once he’s been with his Soulmate.”

Lily pinches her lips at the sight of it.

A jagged scar arcs across the length of Harry’s tender temple and into his sparse eyebrow. She strokes over it with her thumb, feels its magic pulse. They’ve wiped away the blood when they cleaned him, but its angry red mars his dark skin still. 

“Lily...” James sighs. 

“This is not what I planned.”

“I’d be impressed if it was.”

“How do we go forward like this?”

“It could be a curse,” Remus suggests. “Not a Soulmark. That’s almost better.”

It is, but Lily doesn’t agree aloud.

“Soulmates are a blessing,” James insists. “Even if we don’t understand it now, Harry has been given a gift.”

“The gift of being stolen from us?” Lily muses.

There’s a tension as they look at one another, deciding whether to trod the same old argument.

“It could be a curse,” Sirius says. “It doesn’t hurt to check.”

Lily sighs. She’d already asked Albus the very same day it had all been revealed.

A Mediwix stumbles into the room, face plum red. 

“A visitor, Mam.”

Lord Voldemort fills the room with his presence, a black spectre upon the white healing room. Lily sees him as a shadow cast on the setting day.

They’re out of time.

Lily doesn’t realize she’s squeezing her son too hard until he starts to fuss in her arms. Voldemort watches in silence for some time, allowing the tension to rise before stepping up to her bed.

“You may sheathe your wands. I am not here to literally rob the cradle.”

He strains, a leaf following the sun.

“I’m surprised you didn’t insist on being here for the birth,” Lily manages with a bitter laugh.

“I regarded the proceedings from the observatory.”

He gestures with his hand to the large windows looking down on the chamber with a graceful hand. From the bird’s eye, Voldemort heard Harry’s first cries then. His first breath shared and Lily hadn’t even known it.

“I mean only to hold him. May I? Minister.”

It seems physically painful for Voldemort. He's far from a stoic man, but even so, his desperation is blatant. The Mediwixen in the room hold their breath witnessing it all. They've been told at this point, why the Dark Lord is here at this birth. Usually, it is the Light Lord welcoming new souls into the world, and the Dark Lord sending them peacefully away from it. But Voldemort’s intensity is impossible to disguise at this point.

It has been a secret up to now, and so, Lily expects all of Wizarding Britain knows.

“Of course,” James answers when it’s apparent Lily will not.

She grits her teeth and passes her son across the chasm to his Soulmate. She glimpses the raw edges of the Soul Mark again on Voldemort’s palm, a lightnight strike that disappears up his robe sleeve.

The light of their convergence is no less bright this time, and they are all shaken with the force of the backlash. Lord Voldemort is a trembling black tower when it fades, his eyes closed as little baby Harry clutches his forefinger in a tiny grip. His face seems to shimmer in the light, like serpent scales, but it is only tears Lily realizes.

The Dark Lord is crying.

He weeps over Harry cradled in his arms, looks all the world nothing but a man brought to humility. 

Perhaps she has less to fear than first imagined.

—

The age difference is... undocumented territory. 

Lily walks the razor's edge of understanding and boiling, belated rage.

For a while Lord Voldemort is like a third parent to Harry. Her job is demanding, after all, and James can be on paternity leave for only so long.

Feedings and baths and Muggle sippy cups, the Dark Lord is there through it all. In between rituals and sacrifices, seances and lessons on the archaic, he insinuates himself so seamlessly. Like a man just waiting for an opportunity. He reads stories to Harry, guides him through finger paints and garden games. Dotes on him with single minded intensity.

It is disgusting.

Lily knows she is lucky. She knows, can see it in Voldemort's eyes, that she has been granted a mercy. That, rather than attend birthday parties and provide comfort for medical maladies and take walks in the park, Dark Lord Voldemort could spirit Harry away forever and no one would have the will or courage to stop him. That she would stand alone.

She knows that when Harry is crying and clinging to Voldemort's robes when it is time for him to leave and Harry just doesn’t understand why, only that it hurts, it is clear that Voldemort would prefer the alternative of having him always. 

She is lucky that instead of no child at all, she has a child with a dedicated mentor and protector.

She is lucky, she reminds herself even though she will spend her motherhood sharing Harry's firsts; his first words. Something whispered in Parseltongue. His first step, toward his Soulmate. His Hogwarts letter, his wand, his love. Voldemort will take it all.

—

She focuses on the work.

She has a large pool of supporters, friends of the media and the Auror department. 

Voldemort’s sycophants support her unerringly, even if they’re bitter about it. Lily takes particular pleasure in Lucius Malfoy’s sour face every time he votes in favor of one of her agendas. It never gets old even as the years pass. 

Voldemort himself holds title to the Gaunt and Slytherin seats, and he attends sessions and votes when it suits him. A perfect advocate, and it makes her suspicious. It is one thing to have his servants follow along with her, and quite another to do so himself. She can never shake the feeling that he might be planning something else.

Lily works faster, to shore up a defense should the Dark Lord try to overthrow her. She introduces culture and tradition classes in Hogwarts, to assist Muggleborn children, she writes the Muggleborn protection act, elementary schooling for all children, dismantles Azkaban, and has the curse removed on the Defense Against the Dark Arts post, and that’s only in her first four months as Minister.

She’ll diversify the economy after that, start new banks, invest in new markets. Expand. Attend functions, smile, shake hands, parade her special child around on her hip, pass him to Lord Voldemort for starstruck onlookers. Smile. 

Eventually, she’ll reform the structure of the Wizengamot, destroy the seat allotment system and redistribute them to Muggleborns and Purebloods alike. For now, she uses Lord Voldemort’s support ruthlessly. 

She serves a seven year term and another.

She is only tempted to try repealing some of the soulmate laws every few years or so. It is a dream, smoke in the air. 

—

Lily battles with what fate has given her, and James sees no battle at all.

“I won’t pretend to understand why this is happening,” James says. To appease her. To gentle her. “But I also won’t pretend it isn’t. He _loves_ Harry, anyone can see.”

“He’s… _grooming_ Harry! Turning him into a perfect little consort. It’s well beyond acceptable, James.”

They look out the small Burrow windows where Harry can be seen playing lawn Quidditch with the Weasley children.

“He’s hardly _that_. Yesterday, he said he wanted to grow up to make chocolate frogs.”

James laughs a little to disarm her, but she doesn’t allow it,

“Am I supposed to do nothing while a man older than your father courts a child? My child? He holds him with the same hands that orchestrates the darkest revelries of our society. Taints him with his presence. His influence is everywhere!”

James sighs sharp and frustrated. 

“Lily, please… The Dark Lord didn’t choose this any more than we did. We’re all navigating this strange circumstance, he most of all. We must accept—”

“Why? Why is that acceptable? Do we even truly understand what Soulmates are to each other? We haven’t even tested if they can be apart!”

James gets that pinched look like he’s trying not to say something offensive. 

“I will not hurt my son for the sake of your feelings. We’ve talked about this before.”

“You think my being a Muggleborn makes it impossible for me to understand the gravity of it.”

“You didn’t grow up hearing about it. It’s old magic,” James implores.

“So you’ve said,” she bites back.

“It isn’t fair to hurt Harry for our own reservations.”

“So you’ve _said_!”

“We need to be understanding.”

Lily goes to strike at the air with her hands and stops herself at the last moment.

“I have to go to the office. Tell Harry I’ll see him for dinner.”

James catches her arm before she can get to the Floo. He bores into her eyes.

“Harry won’t be a child for long. One day he’s going to leave to be with the Dark Lord. I want him to have a reason to come back and visit. _Accept_ this.”

Lily snatches her arm away and brushes past a flustered Molly without another word.

—

Harry grows up shy and powerful and good at quidditch. He's curious and mischievous and very stubborn, and always finds trouble. When he befriends Muggleborn Hermione Granger and maintains his friendship with the Weasley clan, Lily feels like she can relax. 

He’s so _good_ , down to his very heart, his very toes.

When Lord Voldemort starts arranging playdates for Harry with the Malfoys and Parkinsons and Greengrasses, she very nearly combusts. Her hands are tied and the only comfort is Harry’s tales about tormenting little Draco and Pansy. Of horrifying Daphne and Astoria with his poor manners.

“Do you think he'll go in Gryffindor?” James asks hesitantly.

“Of course!” Sirius says, but Lily sees Voldemort's secret smile.

“The Hat knows best,” is all he says.

Of course, Harry is Sorted into Slytherin. 

It doesn't bother Lily in itself. James and the boys all make a raucous of course, out of a sense of House pride until they see Harry and are all celebration. A House in Hogwarts does not a man make, after all. It is everything else. 

What man will Harry grow to be, when his life will never be truly his own? How can it be when the fibers of his very soul are so entangled with that of a master orchestrator?

Will she recognize him?

Will he recognize her?

—

She focuses on the work.

She chases rumors into shadows, that dark forces are organizing. Mobilizing. 

Her only supporter in this is Albus and a handful of Order members. No one wants to believe there’s a war coming.

—

The public affair of Gellert Grindelwald and Albus Dumbledore is well documented. It has become fodder for the masses, their tale one of prevailing love and ultimate fidelity!

There are books and magazines and articles and poems and songs. Soulmates opposite on the battlefield, doomed to one another, doomed without. It is beyond sense. It is… _propaganda_. And through it all—a massive war, a duel, imprisonment, a near execution, all of it ignored for the sake of retelling this _love_ story—are either of them truly happy? 

Lily imagines things are better for them these days with Grindelwald on indefinite house arrest, considering that house is Dumbledore's.

Before the second election, Lily visits.

The house is quaint and cluttered in the way she’d expect Albus’ home to be. Books, and bobs that whistle and steam with no apparent function. Clashing wallpapers and tapestries, portraits that are overly grumpy and jovial both. 

Grindelwald is perhaps the only fixture that doesn’t appear to belong. He is having his tea on the veranda when Lily arrives. A small, eldery House Elf leads her there.

Grindelwald is… wasted. All but crushed under the strain of captivity. He does not smile when she joins him at his dainty patio table.

“Are you still called Lord?” she asks, not intentionally cruel and not avoiding cruelty either. 

“Are you still called Minister?”

She huffs.

“The vote is tomorrow.”

“I knew you would come here eventually. How old is your Blessed Child?”

Lily pours herself a cup from the pot that steams gently on the table between them. She looks out over the gardens. It’s a pretty prison at least.

“Thirteen.”

“Hmm, longer than I thought.”

“You don’t keep track of the time here?”

“Why would I, Minister? I want for nothing here.”

And upon this declaration, Grindelwald looks at her finally with an ironic twist to his mouth and tips his cup toward her.

“Yes, I suppose so...”

“Ask what you came to ask, girl.”

Where to start? Lily takes a sip of tea to stall for time. DarJeeling.

How could you do it. How could you torment your soulmate. How could you bear it and bear to do it again. And again. 

“How could you bring yourself to… to hurt him?”

Grindelwald does laugh now.

“Haven’t you ever done something you knew would hurt? Pressed the quill nub a little too hard on your finger? Bit down on your lip a little too long? Cut yourself and watched the blood instead of staying it?” He leans forward, and they’re very close now because Lily has leaned forward too without realizing. “Played with fire?”

Lily has done blood magic and many things besides. She has worked to unconsciousness and once, when she was seventeen and the cusp of leaving Hogwarts for good and deciding what she would do with the rest of her life, she’d stabbed herself in the thigh with a knife in Potions class. Just to feel something other than the noise.

She thumbs over the bump of the scar now.

“What’s your point?”

“Albus and I are one and the same. What do they say in the Odysseys and the Iliads... one soul, one blood, two bodies. Any injury between us is... masturbatory.” 

“Self-harm is easy,” Lily finishes. 

“Inevitable. You cannot protect your son from himself.”

She exhales hard and leans back in her chair. The garden is marginally less pretty. 

“Do you think Lord Voldemort is staging a coup?”

“What do I know of the affairs of the outside world, Minister? My only company are the House Elves and Albus when he is feeling sociable. My lawyer stopped visiting many decades ago and I no longer read the papers. They’re dreadful literature.”

Decades...

“What is it like? WIth Albus.”

“Even now? Agony. Bliss.”

She sighs. Feels much older than she is.

“I want him to be happy.”

“Minister, even at our worst, thousands of miles apart, estranged and hating each other, happiness was always there to greet us both when we came together again. It is as inevitable as the hurt.”

“That is no comfort.”

Grindelwald’s mouth becomes a terse, flat line.

“No. It isn’t.”

There’s a clatter from inside the house. Lily watches with macabre curiosity as Grindelwald’s very flesh reacts. He unwinds, his eyes brighten, his skin flushes. He looks fifty years younger.

Starved. Starving.

“Gellert?” Albus calls from within.

“Here, _Süsser_.”

—

Lily leaves shortly thereafter and does not visit again. 

—

She catches them in a kiss. A clawed hand is disappeared up the back of her son’s cloak, they are fused together at the jaw, arched and grotesque, and Harry is _fourteen_. 

Is it the first, she wonders as they separate at last, Harry gasping as the Dark Lord hisses secrets into his open mouth. Is it the second or third, she wonders as Harry spots her and turns fire red. 

It’s no wonder she sees it happen; they’re in the front lawn for all of Godric’s Hollow to witness.

“Mum!” Harry yelps.

He hides behind Lord Voldemort, because he is an embarrassed child. It highlights his immaturity, his youth, and she looks on as Voldemort allows it, indulges it. Looks shameless and unafraid of her mounting wrath. Harry peeks at her, chewing his lips. He is made small by Lord Voldemort’s unnatural height, looking all the smaller.

When it is clear that Lily, speechless in her anger, will neither say anything nor leave, Harry tugs at Voldemort’s sleeve.

“Um, I’ll see you later? At the party?”

The Ministry gala, celebrating the latest legislative victory, one of many. It seems nothing can go unconquered for the Dark Lord, within the Ministry and without. In Lily’s own front yard, no less. 

They’ll go together as a family, she, James, and Harry. And Lord Voldemort will meet them there, because it’s only proper, it’s only expected. It’s unavoidable. 

“Until then, Child.”

_Child_.

Harry glances to Lily, furtive and quick, before he reaches up and pulls Voldemort’s head down for a quicker kiss to the cheek. Something glitters on his finger. He marches up the porch step, shoulders to his ears for blushing so hard and tries to dart past Lily without looking at her. She catches him by the hand and raises it to inspect.

A gaudy black ring on his finger, an easily recognizable one at that.

Lily scoffs in disgust.

“Go get dressed. And take that off.” 

Harry clasps his hand and the Gaunt ring to his chest and disappears inside the house, whilst Lily is left Sentinel on the doorstep. It is but an illusion, but it strengthens her being between them. She can feel the tide of their bond as it stretches across her skin, caught in the frequency. It scrapes. 

“Have you no decency?” she asks, cold and afire.

Lord Voldemort considers her lazily without repentance. The answer is apparent enough. Decency?

“He is a child, yet you’d...”

Covet him. Touch him.

Lord Voldemort advances on her then, slow and unyielding. He forces her to retreat into her own foyer. 

“Have I not waited these years, Dear Lily? Have I been not kind with you?”

Lily cannot deny it, for it is the truth.

“I am an acolyte of the velvety Dark. My lifetime’s work has seen it that I seek satisfaction and sensation. Power and pleasure. I am neither patient by nature nor by practice.”

He is terrible to remind her. He needn’t; she never forgets.

“You have named him, housed him, loved him. Alas, none of him is yours because before you knew him, he was named mine.”

_He has your eyes_ , James said when they’d held him together. _So green_.

It isn’t _fair_.

Lord Voldemort’s eyes are red. They say I will take him from you. They say you cannot stop me.

They say time is running out.

—

Inside, Lily marches up the stairs and breezes through Harry’s closed door.

“Mum!” he shrieks, half-dressed.

“Give it to me.”

“What?”

“Take the ring off, and give it to me.”

Harry’s prudish embarrassment turns to indignation.

“No!”

“You’re too young to be engaged, you’re not wearing a courting ring, give it to me!”

Harry is again cradling his hand to his heart.

“It’s just a sign of, of devotion!”

“It’s an aberration!”

“We’ll be married anyway!”

Lily swallows her next words, stung to the bone. Caught.

Harry takes his opening.

“So what if I wear a ring or not, we’re going to be together forever. I’m not a little kid anymore, I want to wear it. I want to, to travel with him and hold hands and dance and… and kiss.”

“Dears?” James calls from the bottom of the stairs. “Shall we be going soon? Why are you yelling?”

“That man...” Lily seethes. “That man is not good.”

He’s killed. His bloodlust during the last of Grindelwald’s war is renowned. His bloodlust thrums still.

“He does not deserve you.”

He is plotting to overthrow her.

“He’s dangerous.”

Harry looks at her then, his eyes a mirror of hers. Cold and evergreen.

“You’re dangerous,” he says. “And so am I.”

With her blood, honestly how could Harry be anything but? 

The earth will roll forward even if she steps backward to resist it.

At the gala, Harry wears the ring.

Lily focuses on the work.

—

She has a file in her office, stuffed with rolled parchment. Drafts. Soulmate protection repeals. Bills that give parents rights over soulmates. Protect children. Demand separation for large age differences. Chaperones. Time limits. Anything to keep Soulmates from being so _greedy_.

The parchment dries and turns yellow, the ink fades. She has enough self-preservation for that at least. 

—

The rumors of amassing power grow in frequency. Rumors of a dark army. Of immortality. 

“What is he waiting for!” she screams.

She rages, the Order of the Phoenix silent around her. 

They watch her wreck the room.

“He’s waiting for the right time, Lily,” Alice says patiently. Consolingly. “Until then, it’s all silent maneuvering.”

“Well, stop him!”

Frank goes to clasp her shoulders, but Lily shakes him off. She rubs her eyes, walks in circles.

“We’re running out of time...”

Moody limps up to her.

“Get a hold of yourself Minister. When he strikes we’ll be ready.”

She gets home to find Sirius and James huddled together in the kitchen nursing firewhiskey.

“Where have you been?” James asks. “You’ve been missing from work all day. I had to learn from your toady that you were gone on business.”

Toady is what James calls Undersecretary Barty Crouch Jr. An appointment that came heavily recommended from the Dark Lord. 

“I was with the Order.”

“Ah. Working out your frustrations?”

Lily bites her cheek on the acidic response. James thinks the Order is ridiculous. Chasing a threat that doesn’t exist. 

“What are you two doing here drinking in the dark?”

They share a look between themselves, and Lily’s calves tense with foreboding tension.

“Amelia Bones has resigned from her position as Head Auror,” James says at long last. “The department has been in an uproar all day trying to reach you.”

Lily sinks into a chair opposite her boys, winded. 

“Amelia?”

“Unreachable as well. Family says she’s on holiday in Wales.”

Lily shakes her head. 

“And who has the department assigned as her interim replacement?” she asks, voice high.

“Oh, you’ll get a kick out of this,” Sirius laughs. 

Lily doubts it.

“Tell me.”

“You’ll never guess.”

“Tell me!”

Sirius stops laughing, face tight.

“Dearest Cousin Bella.”

Bellatrix Lestrange. 

Lily takes James’ glass of firewhiskey and finishes it in one go. She takes Sirius’ next.

Lestrange joined the Auror department along with her husband around the time Lily first came into office. She’s as loose with the letter of the law as Sirius, more volatile and cunning, more wild and cruel. 

“It’s beginning. Though really it started long ago.”

“Not this again, Lily,” James sighs. “It’s an interim appointment. She’ll be replaced quicker than you can say Mimbulus Mimbletonia.”

“You are unbelievable! Your _own_ department is being taken over by a bunch of racist lunatics, your boss is missing on a supposed unscheduled holiday, and the monster responsible for it was having brunch in Diagon Alley today with our only son!” 

“She has a point, James. I mean, I was right there, and they chose Bellatrix over me. Me!”

“This isn’t a laughing matter. She’ll never step down.”

“Well, aren’t you the Minister?” James shouts. “What good is it for you to marshall our lives all day if you can’t do it at work?”

“Excuse me?” 

“Just because you can’t _order_ Harry to stop having a Soulmate—”

“He’s putting his _hands_ on our son, and you just look away!”

“ _You—_ ”

“Mum? Dad?”

Lily picks up her chair from where she’s thrown it back, and they turn to look at Harry. He’s rubbing sleep from his eyes, wand raised in a _Lumos_.

“Everything’s all right sweetheart. Your father and I were playing a drinking game. We’ll keep it down now.”

Harry blinks at them. 

He’s gotten taller this year, the hem of his Yule themed pajamas falling a few inches above his ankles, and he’s letting his hair grow out past his shoulders, “like Uncle Sirius.” His Soulmark is mostly hidden this way, lost behind curled fringe.

“Maybe you should get a divorce,” Harry says. “Since you fight so much.”

They’re silent. What can one even say? This isn’t at all how Lily planned or imagined.

“Go back to bed Harry,” she manages to croak. “We’ll talk about it in the morning.”

Harry huffs. Twists the ring on his finger like a nervous habit.

“Sure, whatever you say Minister.”

Sirius coughs and clears his throat awkwardly after Harry’s disappeared up the steps. He says his goodnights and nearly dashes for the Floo. James and Lily stare long at each other in the dark, not saying anything.

It’s worse than saying anything at all.

Bellatrix Lestrange does not step down from her interim position

—

Harry finishes his fifth year, his sixth year. 

The tide of Lily’s support trickles away as sand. Washes under her feet. Where Lucius and his ilk once wallowed their tongues in her presence, they now whisper and push their agendas. Where before the Dark Lord gave them only a look to keep them in lone, he operates according to his own aims as before. 

“I’ve neglected my duties for care of my Soul,” he tells her. “Harry is older now, he can join me in my work.”

She says no.

It does not matter.

Albus writes her to tell her the Dark Lord has begun taking Harry from campus in the evenings. For special tasks, for rituals and lessons and tutoring. 

“He has a right,” is all he can say when she asks why he doesn’t stop it.

James and Lily avoid one another. 

They don’t say divorce, but James begins to stay with Sirius most nights, and Lily stops going home. She paces her office. Interrogates departments for strange activity, suspicious people. They begin to call her paranoid. She looks in their faces and counts fewer allies than months ago. Years ago, maybe. 

—

It is summer and Harry is telling her he is going away with the Dark Lord for the holidays.

“He has so much to show me.”

He goes, and Lily does not know him any longer. He is such a strange wonder, powerful and bright. She sees herself in his silhouette sometimes, but mostly she sees Voldemort. 

“You should take a holiday yourself,” Undersecretary Crouch suggests. 

“I wouldn’t know where to go.”

“You could visit the Muggle world,” Crouch says with his unyielding sneer. “If you’re feeling so out of place here.”

“That place is even more alien to me.” 

Lily can hardly recall how to use a phone. How to speak to her sister. 

“Oh, have you heard the news?” Crouch waves a paper at her and deposits it on her desk. “Ol’ Dumbledore is retiring. Snape’s been appointed the new Headmaster by the Board.”

His teeth gleam in his wide smile.

—

She goes home early that evening to an empty house, after reading the article. Gellert Grindlewald’s suffered a spell of bad health, and so Albus will be devoting his time to the care of his Soulmate. Apparently.

She sits in the dim, wondering when her world has coalesced into such a perfect nightmare. She’s drinking in the kitchen when the front door clicks open.

“James?” she calls.

There comes a shuffle, like nervous steps, but no answer.

“Harry?” 

Someone steps into the doorway, a smudge in the darkness. 

“Hello, Lily.”

“Peter,” she breathes. “What are you doing here?”

He taps the tip of his wand against the lanterns, and the kitchen fills with a warm glow. He’s wearing a travel cloak, his hood pulled up.

“I think you know,” he says.

They haven’t seen him in months. He’s always been in and out of the country for work, dropping by for quick visits. He’s a private man, never sharing the research he’s been pursuing. Organizing, he’d say. Rat’s work. 

“So I’m next then,” she says, voice rising. “Being sent on an extended holiday for replacement?”

Peter sighs, and pulls up a chair to the table. He pours himself a glass and refills Lily’s. 

“No. _He_ doesn’t want to start a panic. These things take time.”

“How thoughtful,” she snaps.

“The people trust you. They like you.”

“I’ll die before I hand the Ministry over to _him_.”

Peter regards her for a long moment. Rubs his face.

“The Dark Lord wants you to know that keeping you in your position is not the _easiest_ way. You could disappear, and the world would move on eventually. He wants you to know that he has eternity for Harry to forgive him if that becomes necessary. It doesn’t have to be.”

Lily scoffs. She’s crying and trying not to.

Peter reaches for her hand.

“Life will be normal,” he says.

“Normal!” Lily laughs.

“Fussy reporters, paperwork, difficult marriage, elections.”

“Rigged elections.”

Empty days. A position that becomes obsolete. A puppet.

“You already know the steps, the Dark Lord is asking if you’re willing to dance.”

The Dark Lord has never _asked_! Not for anything. He is a creature who can only take.

“I have no master.”

“You have a son.”

She holds her breath.

“Sometimes a husband. You have friends, like Alice and Xenophilius. Your love is broadcasted to all of England. He can chip away at it as slowly as he likes. He has the time.”

She feels her mouth tremble. Covers it before Peter can notice. His beady eyes track her.

“You’re asking for something impossible,” she pleads.

“No, Lily. It’s the easiest thing in the world to give in.”

He’d know, it seems. 

Would it be so bad, really? To be selfish. To step aside. 

Gods, she’d die, she’d _die_ for Harry, if she had to stand between him and the very devil. But nothing can stand between him and the devil. They are one and the same. They always have been.

Would it be so terrible? 

To have the one thing she’s been desperately clutching? Harry’s graduation, his apprenticeships, his journeys. Watching him grow into something astounding! 

To have a little more time.

Had she not been Muggleborn, would she not have followed the Dark Lord anyhow?

It seems her path has always led here.

“Okay.”

—

Very little is changed.

Lily meets with international allies, attends Wizengamot sessions, answers to the media. She has quiet, stilted dinners with James, brunch with her friends. 

She and the peace are proof, that there is nothing to fear! Nothing to find behind the curtain, that there is nothing to hide. The Ministry is as strong as ever. Muggleborns and Halfbloods need not question their place in society, so long as they follow the law. Why, the Minister is Muggleborn herself!

The ground beneath them is slipping, tilting so gradually, it lulls them to sleep rather than startling them.

Nevermind that Undersecretary Crouch Jr writes her speeches. Passes her agendas. Organizes and controls her schedule. Or that she is watched constantly. Nevermind that Albus no longer speaks with her, only stares in quiet judgement. Or that her personal post is monitored, censored, intercepted. That she is forbidden from visiting her Muggle parents.

Life is _normal_.

Is it worth it? She can only ask herself.

Isn’t this what everyone wanted from her? Harry, James, Voldemort? The entire world? 

Compliance.

Obedience.

Congratulations.

“Mum?”

Lily puts down her drink and turns to Harry. He’s in his convocation robes, his eyes searching.

“They’re ready to start the ceremony.”

“You should be with the other students,” she tells him, cups his cheek in her hand. 

“I know, I wanted to talk to you before everything begins.”

He’s nervous. 

“I wanted to tell you—”

He stops, twisting and twisting his ring around his finger. 

“You’re the first one, Voldemort and I, we...”

“Minister?” Crouch says, pulling the platform’s curtain back. “Oh, hello Harry. Shouldn’t you be with the other graduates?”

Harry gives a jerky nod, kisses Lily’s cheek. 

“I’ll tell you later. After.”

They gather along the raised platform on Hogwarts’ rolling lawn, she, the Board of Governors, Albus and Voldemort. She’s to give a speech, and it tastes like ash. She finds James in the crowd of parents seated to the side, and they stare at one another. She hasn’t quite decided how to articulate her situation to him, and she isn’t certain it matters.

“Congratulations are in order, Minister,” Lucius purrs, when the ceremony is over and the feast has begun.

“Congratulations?” she asks. 

“We’ve all just heard, the Dark Lord and your son will be leaving from here to the continent for their honeymoon directly.”

His mouth curls into an ugly smile. She can’t stand to look at it. She has become him, a pawn to a pawn.

“Surely, you knew...?”

Lily searches across the hills and finds them, Harry and Voldemort together as always. They are surrounded by admirers and gawkers.

“Of course,” she lies. “They have my blessing.”

She drowns in well-wishers the rest of the day. James finds her in the storm and weathers it with her. He holds her hand.

“I know this is difficult for you,” he murmurs.

“It’s not for you?”

He’s not looking at her, or he’d see her indignation, pointless though it is. He’s looking at Harry.

“It’s worth it.”

Is it?

She doesn’t know.


End file.
